Many users of other OS's are stopped at the login screen. During the install of a distribution you are asked for a root password and for a user name and password. These are the ticket into the Linux system. When you begin to run the EMC on a single machine you will run it as root. When the screen asks for user name type in root<tab> and type in the password that you gave to root. You may not see or think anything is happening when you type in the password. This is protection so that the buddy looking over your shoulder will not even know how many letters are in the password. Just keep typing and when you reach the end of the password press <enter>.
If you are in a text terminal rather than the graphic login, the prompt will begin with the name that you have chosen for your PC or localhost if you did not enter a name during install or configuration. It might look like